Foley & Lardner LLP partner Lauren Loew highlighted the ongoing legal wrangling over Illinois’ Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA) in the Law360 article, “Illinois Cases To Watch In 2025.”
“There’s been a substantial uptick in GIPA litigation in the last several years,” Loew commented. “It’s an old act, but there’s not a lot of case law interpreting it.”
Loew highlighted one case in particular, in which a district judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit against a major airline that claimed the airline violated job applicants’ genetic information privacy rights by requiring them to disclose family medical history during the hiring process. While rejecting the airline’s arguments that certain disclosed medical conditions were not covered under GIPA, the judge left for summary judgement the question of whether the claims were barred by the extraterritoriality doctrine, given the plaintiff lived in one state while applying for work in another.
“It is going to be very interesting to see if there is a decision on the merits that applies GIPA to employees and applicants out of state,” Loew said. “The implications of the reach of the statute could be significant.”
Loew also noted that it will be worth paying to attention to how other district courts handle the issue as they work through what exactly constitutes genetic information and determine an appropriate statute of limitations for claims under Illinois’ Biometric Privacy Act.
“There’s this wave of case law under GIPA that’s just starting to analyze the statute and figure out where this is going,” Loew added.
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